Creative Think Tank

The Future of Transport

The future of smart city transportation is being developed at an exponential rate: autonomous cars, smart, folding cars, electric bicycles and projects such as the SolarRoad, a cycle path that turns sunlight into electricity, a technology that is already being developed for motorways. motorways. We’ve seen crazy ideas such as the Transit Elevated Bus, a car-straddling bus, designed to run on tracks laid either side of roadways. It didn’t catch on – mainly because it was just an impractical, ugly train! However, here are some of the more credible, futuristic modes of transportation in development, which will make our cities and lives truly smart.

The Persuasive Electric Vehicle is being developed by the city science research group MIT Media Lab. Designed as a low-cost, agile, shared-use autonomous bike, it can be either an electrically-assisted tricycle for passenger commuting, or an autonomous carrier for package delivery.

Meanwhile, the Velocopter is a fully electric, multi-blade vehicle, which can be piloted, or remotely-controlled, for the transportation of passengers or droned cargo. German designed and built with18, quiet rotor blades, it recently made its maiden, public flight as an autonomous urban-air taxi in Dubai. Its first passenger was the brave CEO of Intel in Las Vegas, Brian Krzsanich.

German company Lilium is developing the world’s first fully-electric vertical take-off and landing jet with an estimated range of up to 300km and zero emissions.

Of course, transport of the future needs beautiful design and Foster and Partner architects has just created a vision for the world’s first commercial Hyperloop system that is set to launch in Dubai in 2020.

Hyperloop is a sealed system of tubes through which a passenger pod travels, with no air resistance or friction, at speeds of up to 760 mph. Hyperloop systems are now being developed by various companies around the world including; Transpod, HTT and Virgin’s Hyperloop One.